


Death Becomes Him

by MrsHamill



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Confessions, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-18
Updated: 2008-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 04:16:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6037726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHamill/pseuds/MrsHamill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney finds something he really doesn't like. Serves him right for snooping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Becomes Him

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Flashfic challenge _Not Dead Yet_ , though after this I feel like I should be! God bless Kimberlyfdr, Amireal and Susan for their help on this... thing. It was supposed to get me past The Block From Hell and instead it almost melted me down. They're the reason if it's readable at all.

It was all Rodney could do not to run back to his quarters, his laptop in hot standby, clutched to his chest like it was solid gold (or a case of peanut butter Powerbars). When he arrived, he locked his door, adding a special lock that was everyone-but-maybe-Sheppard tough -- he wanted _no_ distractions. Not for this. Then he put his laptop carefully on his desk, hooked up its power supply, and opened it.

The picture on the recording was in razor-sharp focus, showing every dangerous spike in John Sheppard's hair. "Hey, Rodney," he said. His face held a weird expression -- weird even for him -- something like an abashed smirk. "Yeah, it's me. And yeah, if you're seeing this, then I'm dead... huh. That _is_ pretty weird to say." John paused briefly and blinked. "Anyway, I'm sure you're pissed at me for dying and if I know you -- and I do, which is scary -- you're frantically trying to reverse whatever happened. Well, stop it. Everything ends, buddy, and I had one hell of a good ride, more than I'd ever expected. I'm sure whatever happened wasn't your fault... well, mostly sure, and even if it was, I forgive you. Let it go, McKay. It's okay." 

Rodney realized he was holding his breath. He let it out with a gasp and forced himself to breathe normally. In the recording, John licked his lips and continued. "Now, I'm sure you're also pissed at me for making you the executor and sole beneficiary of my 'estate,'" he cocked his fingers in the air as he said it, "such as it is. I hope I remembered to tell you, but I bet I forgot. I mean, who wants to remember things like that? Sorry. I hope you're not _too_ pissed at me for that. But you see, I have a lot of stuff my father and brother would want to take and, you know, I just don't want them to. There's also a chunk of change -- some of it will revert to my brother -- and _I'd_ rather decide where to spend it. Which is why I picked you, and why I'm telling you now what I want you to do with all of it. I can't imagine _anyone_ making you do what you don't want to do.

"First off, don't let them ship me back to Earth. I want to stay here, so cremation and scattering of the ashes... you know the drill, especially since you tried to make me do the same to you not long ago, you bastard. At least _I'm_ not asking you to deliver my eulogy." John gave the camera a raised eyebrow and Rodney knew he was being gently teased; the thought made his throat tight. "So, yeah. Though you can put a little bit of me in Caldwell's coffee, if you can get away with it. Maybe then he'd _grok_ me; what do you think?" John's smirk was all wicked fun and Rodney clenched his fists, suddenly, inexplicably furious.

"As for stuff, well, give my surfboard to Lorne, he's pretty good and I think he'll appreciate it. Give Ronon my golf clubs -- tell him he has to learn how to play -- and my guitar. Remember how he's always goofing around with it on team movie nights? For Teyla, there's this box in my footlocker, it's the last of stuff from my mom and I want her to have it. There's a letter inside explaining all of it. And give her my skateboard, tell her it's for Jinto. Give Elizabeth the two sets of tags on the peg behind my desk. They're Ford's and Sumner's, and I want her to have them. I also want her to take my dress blues; or really, just my ribbons and pins. She deserves medals for what she's put up with out here, and that's the best I could do for her. Make sure you tell her that, okay? There're also some candles and stuff in my footlocker for her, let her take what she wants."

Rodney closed his eyes. Well, between that and the cremation comment, he had a good idea of when the video was shot, updated, whatever. Funny John hadn't updated it since, though they had been pretty damn busy of late.

"Now you. I'm sure all my permissions have been disabled, but you still might need my command codes, passwords, pin numbers, all that shit. They're in an encrypted file on my laptop, the file name is 'catwoman.' The password is..." John paused and his grin turned wicked. "You know, I think I'll just drop hints about what the password is, because I know you'll eventually figure it out. Okay, the year _Plan Nine from Outer Space_ was shot, not released, _shot_ , the real first name of the actress who was 'Vampira' and the birth year of an obnoxious genius. Topped off by two numbers you know very well. And you figured I wouldn't remember your password! Mine is _obviously_ more difficult."

Rodney felt his jaw drop and realized he was now close to hyperventilating. Part of him wanted to reach out and stop the recording but he couldn't; his muscles were frozen.

"On the cash thing, well, do what you want with it. Buy Jeannie a new car or house or whatever, or sock it away for Madison's tuition. Spend some of it on the Athosian kids, tell Teyla I wanted that. Get 'em some sports equipment or something else that's fun, not absolutely necessary. They need a chance to be kids."

After a brief pause and a deep breath, John continued. "For the rest of it... you get first dibs on my movies, but you can open it up once you've picked -- team comes first, though. And I'd like it if you have the picture of me with Evel Knievel. That was the third best day of my _life_ , getting to meet him. My mom took me and he was just as... well, it was great." John was smiling, his eyes shining in memory. "I know you, you're probably wondering what the other two days were. Aren't you?" Rodney clenched his fists and narrowed his eyes; he wouldn't respond to the recording, no matter what. It was a _recording_ and there was nothing to be gained by talking back to a stupid _recording._ At all.

"Well, the second best day was the first time I flew solo in an F-16 Thunderbird. Next to a 302, the best bird I ever flew. The best day, though... and don't let this go to your head... but the best day was meeting you. Sitting on the chair in Antarctica, hearing this noisy, obnoxious guy in bright orange telling me to think about where I was in the solar system. You know, I spent the first two or three months here on Atlantis annoyed with you. Pissed off at you. But after a while I realized how useful you were, and then I realized... well. You kind of became..." John frowned, paused again, swallowed and took another deep breath. Rodney noticed he wasn't looking at the camera pickup but rather at a point a few inches below it.

"Look. I grew up rich and that meant I never really had friends. Or maybe I never had real friends, at least not until I went into the military, because in the military everybody's the same. But even there... I guess I'm just not the type of person to make friends easily. Until you came along. You just kept proving me wrong about yourself. You just kept doing things I never expected out of you and that meant I had to keep revising what I thought of you, how I thought of you. Now, don't get me wrong, you're still obnoxious, conceited and paranoid to a fault -- not to mention a raging hypochondriac -- but still, you're... you're as close to -- to a best friend I've ever had. You get me, you know? I've never had that before. It's... um... kind of... well... um. Nice?"

John's voice trailed off and he rubbed the back of his neck. It was such a familiar gesture it took Rodney's breath away. Classic Sheppard avoidance, the 'aw shucks' part of his personality -- he _still_ wasn't looking at the camera pickup. "Y'see, here's the other part of it. I'm... I'm... well... um. Sort of... Um. You know, it's... I like to... occasionally... ah... 'switch hit.' And I might be interested. In you. I mean, you are _so_ not my type, but for some damn reason, I... Well, you know."

"No, I don't!" Rodney yelled, waving his arms.

"And I bet you're yelling right now, if you haven't already started." John made a sound that was about halfway between a chuckle and a request for the Heimlich maneuver. It was _unreal_ , completely unreal and Rodney felt like he'd been hit by a truck. "Look, McKay, it's not that important and you're straight anyways, but I just wanted you to know. I wanted you to realize that you're, you know, not entirely unappealing. You can be such a pain in the ass, overconfident and overbearing but underneath, you've got this nasty insecurity streak and you really need to get over it, somehow. Because, it, you know, takes a while to get past the whole invulnerable, psycho astrophysicist outer shell but once you do, there's a pretty decent guy there. And if you... If you had been even remotely interested, I would have... I might have said something." John paused again and sighed. "So quit selling yourself short, okay? Get more serious with Katie; she's nice and she likes you and you're completely worth it."

"What _are_ you, a twelve year old _girl_?" Rodney roared.

John took a deep breath. "So that's that. I'm going to miss you, buddy. At least I assume I will. And I guess... I guess I hope you'll miss me. Oh! Almost forgot, I want you to have my tags, and my copy of _War and Peace_ and my Cash poster. You don't have to put it up, even, I just want you to have it. Think of me, sometimes, buddy. And I really... really care about you. You know. More than a friend cares for another friend. That's all there is, I guess... sorry I dumped all this on your head, especially now. But--"

Rodney didn't hear the rest of it because he slammed his laptop shut, wrenched the cords out of the back, picked it up and stormed out of his room.

* * *

It was late but there had been new comics and magazines on the last Daedalus run, so John was reading the new _X-Men_ ; just taking it easy before bed. The door slid open and he saw Rodney over the top of his comic. "Hey, McKay, what's--"

Rodney threw his laptop at him. Threw his _laptop_ at John. It hit John's boots and rebounded to the mattress, luckily not making it to the floor where it surely would have broken. John lowered his comic and slowly sat up straight, seeing the enraged purple of Rodney's face and wondering if he should make a break for the door. "Rod--"

The guy moved fast. In an instant he was at John's desk, grabbed the Air Force mug John used to store his pens and pencils and threw it at John's head. "You _bastard_! You lousy, rotten--" each invective was punctuated by another item lifted from John's desk and thrown at him -- the floor and John's bed were getting rained on by shards of ceramic and plastic. "--miserable, stupid sack of _shit_ who can't even _tie his shoes_ how fucking _dare_ you--"

John fell into combat mode. He rolled to the floor beside his bed, ducking down and putting it between him and what was clearly a homicidally pissed-off Rodney. "McKay!" he yelled, raising his hands in surrender, getting ready to make a break for the door. "Stop!" Rodney had cleaned off John's desk and had picked up the picture of John with Evel Knievel. "No!" John yelped, leaning up on his knees and reaching his hand out in negation. At least his guitar was out of Rodney's reach -- so far -- but not the picture. "Please!"

With the kind of care John associated with those who were either incredibly drunk or unbelievably angry, Rodney put the picture back on the table, precisely in the same spot. His hands were shaking, opening and closing into fists; he was breathing heavily and his face was still various shades of purple. "I can _not_ believe you would... you asshole, you... you..."

"What?" John got cautiously to his feet, realizing his bed was also between him and his headset. But he could reach the door quickly, and he was pretty sure he could still outrun Rodney. "What did I do?"

"Bad enough you put me in charge of your fucking estate," Rodney ground out, "but then you had to drop that _bomb_ that you're... you're... you _want_ me... and that you... that you..."

It didn't take long to figure it out and John felt his jaw drop. He very quickly went from nervous to irate. "You... you son of a bitch! You hacked my personal files! What the _fuck_ were you--"

Rodney's voice went from gravel to strident in one short step. "Yes I hacked your files! I hack everybody's files! I'm a fucking file hacker! And that is not the point here! The point is--"

"The point is you hacked my files, my _private_ files and now you have the balls to be _mad_ at me--"

"That is not the point! The point is you _lied_ \--"

"--because I _trusted_ you enough to be--"

"--you _lied_ , you bastard, you never _told_ me you weren't... weren't--"

"--the person who would take care of my stuff after I was _dead_ \--"

"--because if you had just fucking _told_ me we could have been fucking for four years instead of--"

"--and I've got to tell you that..." John paused and blinked. "What?"

"--just watching you with bimbo after bimbo..." Rodney trailed off too and blinked. "What what?"

"You said we could have been what?"

Rodney looked almost as confused as John felt. "What what?"

John wanted to shake the asshole but was still leery of Rodney's anger. "You said we could have been what? You said we could have been _fucking_?"

Rodney's face, which had begun returning to a normal color, reddened again. "YES, instead of me watching you with bimbo after bimbo, you jerk! You fucking James T. fucking--"

"You only date women!" John bellowed. 

"So do you!" Rodney shrieked, actually shrieked, loud enough to shatter glass or even plastic except, _hello_ , pretty much all the glass and plastic in John's room had already been shattered. "What difference does that make?!"

After a moment, John realized his jaw was hanging open, so he slowly closed it, while thinking about what Rodney said, or maybe what he hadn't said. Exactly. Rodney McKay was... "You're... you're...?" John waved his hand between them, his surprise robbing his words.

Rodney threw his hands into the air and appeared to be looking for something else to hurl at John. His face was back to purple and John was beginning to worry about ruptured blood vessels. "But you only date women!" John blurted again, still trying to fit his head around the idea that Meredith Rodney McKay wasn't completely straight. Jeannie hadn't said _anything_ about that and surely she would have...?

"So do you!" Rodney bellowed again, carefully emphasizing each word, his finger stabbing towards John.

"I'm military!" John was still reeling... Rodney was...? Wasn't...? Really? "You... I mean... You're sure?"

Now it appeared Rodney's eyes were beginning to pop out of their sockets and John knew he'd be blamed if Rodney died of an aneurysm in his quarters, so he backpedaled fast. "Look, I'm just surprised, that's all, just surprised, because you know, I've been leaving you... I don't know, openings? I've been, well..." Flirting, was the word John wanted to use but before it could come out, his mind bounced back to the real subject of the argument. "And that's not the point! You _hacked my private files_!"

"And I'm going to kill you myself over that damn recording! Even if I _weren't_... even if I'd _never_ been interested, you can't do shit like that and expect no consequences! I swear to God--"

"McKay, just leave off--"

"-- I would have dug you up and killed you again if I had gotten that recording after you died! I would have burned your goddamned Cash poster and melted your stupid golf clubs down for scrap!"

"Shit!" John strode around his bed and grabbed Rodney by his shoulders. "Would you just shut up a minute?!"

The McKay Glare of Death was never so strong as it was at that instant, but John didn't care. He'd weathered _Wraith_ ; he could stand up to Rodney McKay.

Maybe.

"Fine. I'm shutting up. Go ahead and try, just try to justify yourself because you _can't_. There is nothing you could say or do that could _possibly_ explain why you MUMPH!"

John couldn't say exactly what he was thinking, except he was trying to get McKay to shut up, and knew kissing him would keep his mouth too busy to speak. Of course, there were two flaws in John's theory: one; that although it did shut Rodney up, it didn't allow _John_ to speak either and two; he hadn't realized that actually kissing Rodney would be so incendiary that it would completely derail John's (righteous, he knew it was righteous) anger, sublimating it into something far, far hotter. 

By the time he was able to break the kiss, they were both out of breath and judging by the ridge he felt pressing against his thigh, they were both definitely hard. As rocks.

They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment, panting, before Rodney broke the silence with a breathy, articulate "Uhhhh..."

John licked his lips. "Yeah."

Rodney blinked several times. "Uh... what were we...?"

"No clue," John whispered before leaning forward and capturing Rodney's lips again. He had his hands framing Rodney's face and Rodney had one hand fisted in John's shirt, the other around John's back, holding John tightly. Then one of them started pushing and pulling at clothing and that was better, skin was absolutely better, and hotter. Whoever had started the undressing business was a genius. 

Some time later, John realized they had managed to end up on the floor, which was rather chilly. Rodney was draped over him like a large, warm, heavy blanket and they were glued together with dried spunk. John still had one of his socks on and Rodney's boxers were ripped but hanging on to one cheek... barely. His short-term memory was spotty, but John did recall some incredible, brain-melting action somewhere in there -- some swearing, not a lot of groaning but McKay was going to have to do something about that whole screaming/yodeling thing when he came. Not that John was complaining. Much.

John managed to regulate his breathing enough to speak. "Um. Wow."

"Mm-hmm." Rodney sounded as content as a cat who had not only eaten the canary, but had followed it with a cream chaser. 

"You think that's going to be the norm with us?"

Rodney sighed happily. "I certainly hope so." After a moment he added, "Think about what we could do on an actual bed."

"Might kill me."

"You're gonna have to change that recording then."

"Yeah." John dreamily contemplated the distant ceiling. "And I'm going to have to change all my passwords."

"Eh. I'll only hack 'em again. Don't worry, they're hard enough that I'm the only one smart enough to do it."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Don't let it go to your head."

"Which one?"

Rodney groaned and pushed himself up on his hands to look down at John. "That was the worse than  Zelenka calling Louis and Martha a paradox."

It was John's turn to groan. "He didn't."

"He did. He can be quite incredibly lowbrow." Rodney settled back down onto John's chest and it appeared as though he was planning on setting up residency there. John was torn: on the one hand, it was flattering to be thought of as plush toy, but on the other, Rodney was getting _very_ heavy.

A thought came to him. "Why did you hack my files?"

Rodney stiffened. "Um. I was bored?"

"Off." John pushed (gently; well, reasonably gently) until Rodney was the one flat on the floor and John was looming over him. "Why did you hack my personal files? And don't make me call you Meredith."

Rodney rolled his eyes and squirmed, he actually _squirmed_ and John tried to pretend it wasn't hot. "It... nothing. It's just nothing. I was bored. I needed..."

John scowled. "Rodney. I know you. You don't do something like that unless you have a reason."

"Apparently you don't know me _that_ well!" Rodney said with his own scowl.

Busted. "Okay, point taken. Just tell me why."

Rodney's ears turned pink and John tried to pretend _that_ wasn't hot either. "Um. I was going... I mean, I was looking for..."

"McKay..."

"The cheat codes to Tiger Wood's PGA game. I just thought..."

John grinned, then started to laugh.

"It's not funny! And at least you finally figured out-- hey!"

Still laughing, John grabbed Rodney's ears and kissed him hard. "You are so predictable."

Rodney tried to hide his smile, but he wasn't very successful. "I'll show you predictable," he said before rolling John over again in a move that would have made Ronon proud. 

"I'm still going to change my passwords," John murmured in between kisses.

"Password this, Sheppard," Rodney replied before kissing John again. And again.

And again.

end


End file.
